Fifty Points to Ravenclaw
by rejooc
Summary: Professor Snape has little patience for quite average students, let alone the more eccentric characters that enter his dungeon classroom. But when Luna Lovegood presents him a gift "for the nargles," he can't help be amazed by the kindness of the strange girl.


The sock on her right foot was striped, the one on her left was polka dotted. The one hanging from a chain around her neck was argyle. If you asked her why, she would simply say she couldn't choose only two socks so she decided to wear three. Severus Snape did not ask, though, as he simply had no time to bother with the trends of the more eccentric of Hogwarts' students.

He did, however, watch closely as she crushed the bezoar and added the juices to her potion and proceeded to dice the fleecewing fly carapaces with careful precision. She was, he decided, a fair potion maker. He supposed that Ravenclaws would be likely to be adept at the art, although he favored his Slytherin students rather blatantly all the same. This student was different, and as she tucked her blonde hair into the back of her robes and began stirring her potion, holding her wand between her teeth, Professor Snape couldn't help being impressed.

Strolling—skulking some might call it—over to the desk she shared with an unfortunate looking boy with a long nose, he opened his mouth to comment on her work.

"I've made you something." She said, her wispy voice floating out of her mouth.

"I—you what?" Professor Snape didn't appreciate being flabbergasted and his momentary liking for Luna Lovegood seemed to abate.

"For the nargles!" She leaned forward as if she was trying to tell him a secret and didn't seem bothered that he remained standing upright, "I know your heads full of them but I won't tell the other students."

Ducking below her desk, she pulled a small jar from her bag and presented it to the slick black-haired professor as he examined her potion. Carefully preserved inside the jar was a pure white lily, enchanted so that it was subtly sparkling and not-so-subtly changing, aging beautifully before shifting back into a bright young bud, ready to sprout again.

She held the jar out to him, smiling her slightly air-headed smile, and pushed her arms out further when he didn't immediately take it.

"You—I—what?" Again, he was flabbergasted. She smiled widely and turned her attention back to her potion, crushing small beetles and measuring the powder from their shells.

Holding the jar as if it were the most precious thing, Professor Severus Snape left the room and returned to his office where he affixed the jar to his desk with a quick spell and stared at the perfect flower. It was several minutes before he remembered he was teaching a class in the other room and returned to his desk in the dungeon classroom.

"Bottle your potions and, ah, leave them here on my desk with your names on them. You'll receive your, um, your grade. Next week. Yes next week." Some of the students glanced at each other but most didn't notice his change of behaviour. Regardless, he ignored all of them.

Luna Lovegood waited to present her potion last, rambling about adding an ingredient that she thought would make it smell better even though Batty Crawford didn't think it made very much sense for it to smell good if it was only supposed to cure warts anyway.

She turned to leave, not at all perturbed that Professor Snape hadn't hardly moved.

"Don't worry about the nargles," she said, pausing in the doorway, "they usually don't like greasy hair much anyway!"

He ignored the comment, preferring not to explain his styling habits to a student, and forgot until she was down the hall already to say anything.

"Thank you," he muttered softly to the empty room, returning to his office and admiring the lily on his desk.

"Fifty points to Ravenclaw," and for the first time, Hogwarts castle heard Professor Severus Snape give points to a house that was not his own, and Luna Lovegood watched 50 dazzling sapphires drop into the bottom of the hourglass in the Great Hall.

"You're welcome, Professor," she smiled to herself and continued to Herbology, considering whether she should wear all solid color socks the next day.


End file.
